Untitled Document
Everyone's heard about the human rights abuses in African gold and
diamond mines. But when it comes to their ultra-cool, razor-thin cell phones,
American consumers won't get the message.
"As you crawl through the tiny hole, using your arms and fingers to scratch,
there's not enough space to dig properly and you get badly grazed all over.
And then, when you do finally come back out with the cassiterite, the soldiers
are waiting to grab it at gunpoint. Which means you have nothing to buy food
with. So we're always hungry."
That's how Muhanga Kawaya, a miner in the remote northeastern province of North
Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), described
his job to reporter Jonathan Miller of Britain's Channel 4 last year. Cassiterite,
or tin oxide, is the most important source of the metallic element tin, and
the DRC is home to fully one-third of the world's reserves. Some cassiterite
miners work on sites operated directly by the country's military or other armed
groups. Working in the same area are "artisanal" miners who are theoretically
independent, like prospectors in America's Old West. But the cassiterite they
extract is heavily taxed by the soldiers -- when it's not just stolen outright.
With a land area as vast as that of Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico,
Arizona, Nevada and Colorado combined, the DRC has only 300 miles of paved roads.
To reach one of the many cassiterite mines in the virtually roadless northeast,
1,000 miles from the national capital Kinshasa, Miller's team followed a 40-mile
footpath that, he reported, was as "busy as a motorway. Four thousand porters
ply this route carrying sacks of rock heavier than they are. Each of their 50
kilogram packs of cassiterite is worth $400 on the world market. Government
soldiers often force porters at gunpoint to carry the rocks free of charge;
if they're lucky, though, they can make up to $5 a day." (Watch Channel
4's gripping, award-winning report here.)
So, why should we care? Because without cassiterite rock and the other ores
mined in the Congo we would be unable to manufacture the linchpins of our global
"weightless economy" -- computers and telephones.
Greener phones, meaner mines
A horrific war among the DRC military and various rebel armies officially ended
in 2003 after taking 3 million to 4 million lives. But fighting continued long
after that in the northeast, fueled by mining profits. First-ever democratic
national elections in July have set up an October runoff election in the DRC,
along with great hope for the future. Meanwhile, disarmament and integration
of the armies is being carried out. But soldiers frequently receive little or
no pay, and that provides a strong incentive for them to squeeze what they can
from the cassiterite business.
The majority of the ore moves through illicit channels across the northeastern
border to Rwanda, enriching troops and middlemen along the way. The U.K.-based
organization Global Witness has
comprehensively documented the impact of resource extraction in the DRC in a
2005 report that described "killing, rape, torture, arbitrary arrests,
intimidation, mutilation, and the destruction or pillage of private property"
that soldiers used "to gain control either over resource-rich areas or
over the ability to tax resources."
Since the July elections, says Carina Tertsakian of Global Witness, "labor
conditions remain pretty much the same, especially in the informal sector."
She says the DRC government now has slightly more control over the mines, "but
that's not necessarily for the better." Despite pressure from the United
Nations and European Union to pay members of its newly integrated armed forces
more consistently, miners are being treated just as they were during the war.
In a cruel irony, Western efforts to make information-age products more environmentally
friendly actually boosted incentives for violence and exploitation. In late
2002, the EU joined Japan in banning lead from the solder used in cell phones
and other electronic goods. Traditional solder is an amalgam of 63 percent tin
and 37 percent lead, but lead-free solder is composed almost 95 percent of tin.
Partly in response to that new demand, the world price of tin shot up by almost
150 percent between August 2002 and May 2004, and has remained high since. As
prices rose, fighting in the eastern DRC intensified.
Killer coltan
This wasn't the first time that fighters in DRC and Rwanda have reaped a mineral
bonanza. Back in 2000, a spike in the price of coltan, an ore that is the source
of the precious metal tantalum, spurred feverish mining, profiteering and suffering
in the same area of northeast DRC where cassiterite is mined. The DRC controls
an estimated 64 to 80 percent of world coltan reserves, and the windfall from
mining those deposits funded a Rwanda-backed rebel army of as many as 40,000
soldiers during 2000-2002. The mining was also blamed
for destroying habitat of the mountain gorilla; the gorilla population plunged
by half in a national park where coltan was being mined.
Global demand for coltan increased with the growing use of tantalum in cell
phones and other electronic devices. Whereas cassiterite is needed to make the
products more eco-friendly, coltan is needed to make them more compact. Capacitors
made with tantalum have an unmatched ability to hold high voltages at very high
temperatures. Because of that, tantalum capacitors have been essential to the
miniaturization of cell phones and other handheld wireless devices. At the time
of the price spike, the No. 1 destination for the DRC's coltan exports was the
United States. The prices of tantalum and its coltan ore have fallen from their
2000-2002 peak, but continued heavy demand from the electronics industry will
keep their value high.
Getting a signal -- halfway to the moon
There's not much tin, and only a tiny amount of tantalum, in an individual
cell phone; however, explosive growth in the wireless market has piled those
metals up, milligram by milligram, into countless tons. In 2005, worldwide sales
of mobile phones surpassed 200 million per quarter -- that means that factories
are churning out 25 phones every second, around the clock. Customers typically
discard and replace their phones every 18 months in the United States, and that
cycle is said to be down to 12 months in Western Europe.
In the spring of 2001, some analysts were expressing doubts over a seemingly
outlandish prediction that 1.7
billion people -- one out of every four on the planet -- would be wireless
subscribers by 2006. As it turned out, the planet now has more than 2
billion subscribers, and the industry would like to sell a new phone to
as many as of them as possible by the end of 2007.
Two billion of those little phones laid end-to-end would reach almost halfway
to the moon. And that doesn't count the vast numbers already buried in landfills
or abandoned in desk drawers.
As portable electronics acquire even more innovative features and (somehow)
grow even smaller, their manufacture is sure to require even more exotic materials.
And, more likely than not, those materials will come from some exotic location.
Even before the handheld revolution, the United States was importing more than
70 percent of its tin, nickel, platinum and chromium, and more than 90 percent
of its tantalum, aluminum ore, niobium and manganese. The EU and Japan are even
more dependent on imports of those minerals, as well as silver, zinc, tungsten,
gold, vanadium and copper.
Battery and assault
Cell phones, laptop computers and other portable electronics rely for their
power on lithium ion batteries, which aren't just made of lithium. They contain
copper and cobalt (often found together in a single ore called heterogenite)
as well as nickel and iron, and generally have to be replaced every one to three
years. (Up to 6 million will need to be replaced all at once with the recent
recall of Dell and Apple laptop batteries). The DRC has 10 percent of the world's
copper reserves and 30 to 40 percent of its cobalt, and with the prospect of
a stable central government, the country's importance as a source of those materials
for batteries and other uses is expected to grow.
The DRC's mines are in its southernmost province, Katanga, which went largely
unscathed by the war that raged far to the north. Nevertheless, artisanal miners
work under conditions that are only marginally better than those in the tin
and coltan mines. They crawl through incredibly hot, cramped tunnels lit only
by small flashlights or candles, using only shovels or their bare hands as tools.
The BBC reported
last year that the Ruashi mine employs 4,000 miners, some as young as 8 years
old, who "dig and sieve from dawn to dusk."
Although transnational corporations are now rushing in to exploit the heterogenite
deposits on an industrial scale, much of the ore is still being extracted by
artisanal miners like those in Ruashi. Global Witness explained the danger in
a July 2006 report:
Deaths usually occur when miners are digging holes -- sometimes 20 meters
or deeper -- then digging horizontal corridors, known as kalolo or galleries,
as they follow the cobalt or copper veins. The kalolo sometimes extend over
stretches of more than 50 meters ... Those who remain at the top are usually
the first to spot signs of crumbling earth and try to warn their colleagues
of the danger -- often too late. As the mineshaft starts collapsing, they
may attempt to rescue their colleagues trapped underneath. In some cases they
succeed. In other cases, they have themselves been trapped by falling rocks,
injured, and even killed in the process of trying to save their teammates.
There is an expectation in Katanga that after the October elections, foreign
corporations will move in, putting an end to the more dangerous freelance mining.
But the highly mechanized companies will be able to employ only a small fraction
of the current artisanal miners, and, says Carina Tertsakian, there are already
reports of clashes between corporate security guards and miners reluctant to
surrender the sites they've been working.
Scary old phones
The level of exploitation continues to be affected much more by prices on the
London Metal Exchange than by international efforts to protect workers or curb
illicit trafficking of resources. Tertsakian says, "Organizations and journalists
have created greater awareness, but I have to say we haven't seen that awareness
translated into action." Even when Western manufacturers attempt to avoid
buying Congolese minerals mined under deadly and exploitative conditions, they
find it's not easy.
A great amount of the tin, coltan, copper and cobalt move out of the DRC via
such roundabout and shadowy routes that it becomes almost impossible for a company
at the end of the line to determine their origin. And human-rights-conscious
consumers are even deeper in the dark. You can't boycott the assortment of metals
in an electronic device the same way you can boycott a "conflict diamond"
with a clearer history.
Demand for the minerals could be slashed if customers didn't replace their
cell phones as often, and if when they did buy a new one, they no longer treated
the old one as disposable. A myriad of for-profit and charitable organizations
are now collecting unwanted cell phones for resale, donation or recycling. (Read
the list of those who
have taken a pledge of responsibility).
Yet the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) says that currently fewer than 1 percent
of retired phones in this country are restored or recycled. With word spreading,
that market may increase, and begin to affect the new phone market. As the title
of an article in the current issue of Inc. magazine shows, manufacturers are
already concerned: "Three
Scary Words: 'Buy It Used'."
A 2004 California law requires sellers of cell phones to accept return of the
instruments by their customers for reuse or recycling. It was passed in the
face of the industry's intense nationwide efforts to defeat such mandatory take-back
bills. Nationally, all four top wireless companies -- Cingular, Sprint, T-Mobile
and Verizon -- have voluntary take-back programs; however, a "report
card" issued in April by the Washington, D.C.-based environmental group
Earthworks gave those programs an F.
Of the stores Earthworks visited, only 30 percent displayed information on
drop-off and recycling, and only 50 percent of company representatives provided
accurate information on the program. And companies could not verify that they
were handling the returned phones according to best environmental and social
practices, or that they weren't simply dumping many of them overseas.
Kimberlee Dinn of Earthworks says her group has seen some modest improvements
in response to the report card. "There's a little more visibility of programs
in the stores, more prominent mention on some of their websites. But not a single
company has been able to provide us with statistics showing increased recycling
of their phones."
To handle returned phones, all of the big four companies contract with ReCellular,
Inc. of Dexter, Mich., which, according to Earthworks, is the only company to
have been removed from the Electronics
Recycler's Pledge of True Stewardship for noncompliance with its standards.
Dinn says California's mandatory recycling law has been a huge boon to ReCellular,
which has grabbed 75 percent of the national market. CNN puts its market share
somewhat lower, at 53 percent, and praises ReCellular for selling 55 to 60 percent
of its still-functioning phones abroad, largely in poor countries where people
can't afford new ones. That keeps waste out of U.S. landfills but also raises
a question: If most used phones are being bought by people who would not have
bought one otherwise, is reuse really cutting very deeply into demand for minerals,
including those mined under conditions of near-slavery?
Tiny treasure trove
Once electronic goods go kaput (as they all eventually do), the metals they
contain represent a potential "treasure
trove," in the words of USGS. By their calculations, the 500 million
phones now lying unused in American homes and businesses contain more than 17
million pounds of copper, 6 million ounces of silver, 600,000 ounces of gold,
and 250,000 ounces of palladium.
The tin in the 110 pounds of cassiterite a hauler in Congo carries on his shoulders
for 40 miles would make enough tiny drops of tin solder to manufacture tens
of thousands of cell phones. The incentive to recycle that tin is boosted, of
course, by the presence of precious metals lying next to it in the phone. But
each device contains only a few cents' worth of any one metal, even the precious
ones. And unlike aluminum cans, which are composed of a single, nearly pure
metal, electronic goods don't surrender their diminutive, complex array of metals
to the recycler without a struggle.
Among the charges that Earthworks levels at ReCellular has been that it ships
nonusable phones to countries where hand labor for disassembly is cheap but
environmental and workers' rights abuses are commonplace. Dinn says, "You
hear horrible stories from Malaysia, Sudan and other countries -- no protective
gear for workers handling the toxic materials in the phones, work being done
by prisoners."
But Seth Heine, CEO of the phone recycling firm CollectiveGood
in Tucker, Ga., says the metals in nonrepairable cell phones are well worth
the costs of collection, shipping and processing, and that it can be done responsibly.
Because CollectiveGood is "fixated on following absolutely the most environmentally
sound procedures," Heine sends cell phones to an Antwerp, Belgium, company
whose standards are "higher than anything in the U.S."
There, 17 different metals, including tin, copper, and cobalt, can be reclaimed.
But says Heine, "No company's process at this point can reclaim tantalum.
That's frustrating, considering its tragic history in the Congo."
On their backs
Reducing demand for coltan, cassiterite, heterogenite and other ores -- by
reusing, recycling, and simply not buying so damn many electronic goods so often
-- cannot by itself ensure safe jobs and living wages for people in the Congo
or anywhere else. But a seemingly insatiable hunger for mineral resources can
and does distort economies in some of the planet's most desperate locales. Relieving
some of that distortion through reduced consumption at least gives nations and
people a chance to build better lives independent of the ups and downs of world
commodity exchanges.
Back in North Kivu last year, Channel 4's Jonathan Miller asked some of the
people trudging along that muddy trail if they knew what the burdens they carried
would be used for. He reported, "Not one of them knew their cassiterite
was destined for the electronics industry in the rich world. One man claimed
he knew: 'It goes to America,' he said, 'to rebuild the Twin Towers and the
Pentagon.'" I don't know whether Miller told that man the real story --
that within only a year or two, much of the tin in the rocks on his shoulders,
having served its purpose in the information economy, would end up lying unused
in a dresser drawer or trash heap.
Stan Cox is a plant
breeder and writer in Salina, Kan.
_________________________
Read from Looking Glass News
Cellphones
Are Frying Your Brain
CELL
PHONE RADIATION MAY CAUSE VISUAL DAMAGE
Swedish
Study Finds Cell Phone-Brain Tumor Link